Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Proposes 70 Percent Tax On The Rich To Pay For ‘Green New Deal’

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman elected to Congress, thinks there’s a way to fund the “Green New Deal,” a progressive plan to cut greenhouse gases in the United States. In an interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, Ocasio-Cortez suggested that the rich should shoulder a 70 percent tax to pay for it.

“There’s an element where, yeah, people are going to have to start paying their fair share in taxes,” she said before acknowledging that the plan sounds unfathomable to some because it is a departure from the status quo.

“It’s going to require a lot of rapid change that we don’t even conceive as possible right now,” she continued. “What is the problem with trying to push our technological capacities to the furthest extent possible?”

Ocasio Cortez, who was sworn in on Thursday, has been criticized by the GOP and members of her own party as a youngster who doesn’t understand how the world works. Before the swearing-in ceremony, a video from her college days was leaked on the internet which shows her dancing to a routine made popular by the ’80s teen movie The Breakfast Club. Some tried to use the video to discredit her but those plans backfired when people pointed out that dancing was hardly a smear on her ability to do her job.

She even poked fun at the attempt to undermine her by dancing outside of her office on Capitol Hill on Friday.

“I hear the GOP thinks women dancing are scandalous,” she tweeted. “Wait till they find out Congresswomen dance too! Have a great weekend everyone.”

As CNN notes, during the 60 Minutes interview, she also addressed the claims that she’s a radical by embracing the term. In her response, she said that she’s modeling her idea of the world based on people who had made big changes in the United States like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“I think that it only has ever been radicals that have changed this country,” she said. “Yeah, if that’s what radical means, call me a radical.”

The Green New Deal is just one manifestation of the plans that Ocasio-Cortez and other new progressives in the House have for the country. In her campaign for the Democratic primary and the midterm elections, she ran on hot-button issues like Medicare for all, universal housing, free college, the abolition of I.C.E., and a reform of the criminal justice system among other things.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s interview with 60 Minutes will air on Sunday on CBS.